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TV wine commercials aren’t getting any better

One more TV wine commercial that isn’t funny or effective

The Wine Curmudgeon has made a minor study of TV wine commercials, trying to figure out how they can be so bad given that Americans invented TV advertising and so much of it, even the local stuff, is terrific. And I still can’t figure it out.

The latest example? This ad for an iPhone wine app, which combines sex, Airplane!-style humor, wine snottiness, and more sex. Needless to say, it’s a mess, and I can’t tell what the point is. Is the ad making fun of wine to sell its product, is there something so hip going on that I’m too old to understand it, or is the entire thing just dumb?

4 thoughts on “TV wine commercials aren’t getting any better”

Did you actually see this on a TV? You do know that Youtube videos are not the same thing as TV commercials. It wasn’t a great video, but the point you missed is (not that I necessarily support the app) that if you use WineNotes you will know you like a wine before you put something wretched in your mouth.

The commercial is satirical. It’s self-consciously over-the-top. If it weren’t obvious from the bad narration and pointlessly erotic cinematography in the beginning, the (at least attempted) comical finish makes it clear.

Now, whether it’s a successful ad or not is another question. But it’s not trying to use sex to sell a product in the way that, say, Calvin Klein or a perfume maker use sex to sell products. It’s using it’s own reference to sex in an attempt to tell a short story that the producer hopes will stick in the viewer’s mind.

The fact that this wasn’t clear to sophisticated viewers suggests that it is a poor commercial.